


No Ivy to Eat, No Boats to Row

by merriman



Category: Empire Records (1995)
Genre: Break Up, Friendship, M/M, The 90s, more than friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 01:12:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8824153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: A.J. returns to Empire. Lucas gives him time to explain why. Mark and Warren have no tact whatsoever. So, basically, everything's the same as before, even if it's completely different.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bottomfeeder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bottomfeeder/gifts).



> My sincere thanks to my betas, who were both fantastic.

AJ and Corey were in Boston. Deb was the new night manager. Gina had a band now and had dropped a few hours. Eddie worked two jobs, Berko had always only picked up a shift here and there between gigs, Warren was still on probation, and Mark was, well, Mark. It wasn't really that surprising when Joe told Lucas he needed a day manager and Lucas was the lucky guy. Lucas did not argue. Much. Early mornings were not his thing. Or so he'd thought. As it turned out, mornings weren't that bad. Not with a couple of pots of coffee, anyhow.

The cool thing about mornings was that if you got up early enough, you could pretend you'd been up all night. Lucas told himself that every morning as he blindly made coffee and drank it and made more and drank it and somehow dragged himself out of the apartment and to the store. He didn't even have Joe to wake him up since Joe had taken to spending most nights at Jane's place, which wasn't in a basement and had windows that closed and a toilet that flushed reliably. It was lonely, but it was a routine. Everything was fine. Joe was happy, Lucas was okay, the store was safe. Everything was fine.

And then one morning Lucas unlocked the back door to the store and there was AJ, hunched over at the big paint-spattered table at the back of the staff room. Lucas stared at him for a moment until AJ looked up. They stared at each other for a moment. Then Lucas nodded and went on about the business of opening the store. He ran the morning reports and he checked the security camera and he counted the tills in the safe and he counted everything else in the safe and he stacked the tills for Gina and Mark to take when they got in and he put the coffee on to brew and he checked the answering machine and then he unlocked the back door for Gina and Mark, whenever they got there, and finally sat down across from AJ.

AJ did not look up.

Lucas watched him.

AJ continued to not look up.

Lucas mentally applauded AJ's commitment to not looking up. Perhaps he had learned it in Boston. Or Cambridge. Wherever. It didn't matter. What did matter was that AJ wasn't there anymore. He was sitting at the table in the store, working on a new painting for the walls. Which Lucas figured was a good thing. They'd sold a lot of AJ's older work to save the store so the walls had been looking lonely.

"Lucas!" Gina came through the back door. "Lucas, you will not believe what I… AJ!"

Gina dropped her purse on the couch and launched herself at AJ, who finally looked up in time to catch her for a hug. She kissed his forehead and took a step back to look at him.

"We'll talk later," she told him. "Lucas. Don't let Mark touch the music. I've got something to play for everyone."

Mark arrived a few minutes later and was so caught up in his own little world he didn't even notice AJ, who had gone back to working on his painting. When Mark came back in to complain about Gina, however, he finally noticed.

"AJ!" he said, bouncing over to him. "I thought you were, like, in Boston, and like, parking cars in Harvard Yard or something."

Lucas had been going through a new shipment of CDs and stopped to stare at Mark, then grab him by the collar and drag him out of the back room and into Eddie's vinyl nook. 

"Dust," he told Mark. "Dust like your life depends on it." He grabbed the feather duster from the counter nearby and handed it to Mark. "Go."

Mark took it and hurried off and Lucas returned to the back room.

Joe still hadn't arrived, which wasn't a huge surprise, but it did mean Lucas wasn't sure when to expect him. He could come walking in the door at any moment and ask AJ what happened. He'd be understanding and reassuring and intensely awkward. Lucas had seen it before. It wasn't pretty. So Lucas went back to going through the shipment but looked over at AJ after a moment.

"Where are you staying?" he asked.

This time, AJ looked up. He shrugged and tossed his paintbrush into a cup of water. "Berko's place. He's got a futon."

"Berko's futon is not to be trusted," Lucas advised. He'd spent a few nights on it himself. At any given moment it was one sneeze away from crushing its occupant. "You should stay with me. I have a couch that won't eat you."

"Lucas, man, I appreciate it, but I don't know if Joe would be cool with it."

"Joe has been electing to spend his nights elsewhere," Lucas informed him.

"Oh. Think he'll give me my job back?"

"I've got your job," Lucas pointed out.

AJ finally cracked a weak smile. "Yeah. Think Joe will give me my job back?"

*****

Joe, as it turned out, was more than happy to give AJ a job again. Not as day manager, but he and Jane been working on planning more concerts at the store after the success of the Save the Empire event and they needed someone to help Jane with that. They'd still been short someone anyhow. They could only make Warren do so much before he started singing in protest and no one wanted that.

It wasn't that long before Lucas had a brand new routine - modeled closely on the old routine - that involved realizing that AJ was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a morning person. It was alarming, to say the least. But he did usually get the coffee made before Lucas could even open his eyes.

"How the hell did you get put on mornings?" AJ asked after a week of watching Lucas glare at the entire apartment until he got his first cup of coffee. "You're not cut out for this shit, man. You should have been nights, not Deb. I mean, Deb's awesome, but she could do mornings."

"Well, see, there was that time I took nine grand from the store," Lucas pointed out. "It was kind of a thing? Maybe you remember?"

"Oh yeah, I think maybe I do, something about a mobster's wife?"

"Precisely."

AJ shook his head. "Come on. We're going to be late."

They were not late. They never were. Lucas had rarely been late before. Even when he'd been late it hadn't mattered much. He was supposed to get there earlier than anyone else, so as long as he'd gotten there in time to get everything done and the store ready to open, and made up for the time elsewhere, well, Joe hadn't mentioned it and his paycheck hadn't taken a hit. Now, however, he was on time all the time. 

"Hey, AJ?" Warren asked as he came in for the day. "When are we gonna get some good music in here?"

AJ looked up from his desk and looked at Warren. Lucas came over to join him and together they gestured to the entire store just out the doors of the staff room and all of the music the store contained, which was a lot.

"You know what I mean!" Warren insisted. "Like, we need a real band to come play, or sign autographs! Not like that punk, Rex Manning."

Lucas could feel the pitch in the room change. Amazingly, Warren seemed to feel it too, because he adopted a wide-eyed look that Lucas had never seen on him before. 

"I'm, ah, I think someone might be shoplifting," Warren said quickly, before turning and racing out of the room. And hey, who knew? Warren had turned out to have a sixth sense about that sort of thing. Almost as if it took one to know one or something like that. 

Lucas stood beside AJ for a few moments, then looked at him. AJ was staring at the sketch he'd been working on. It was a river scene, not his usual fare, but not bad. While Lucas watched, AJ resolutely flipped his sketchbook to a new page and started something new. Lucas waited, just in case AJ wanted to say something. When a minute went by without any indication that AJ was going to say a single word, Lucas just pulled over a stool and grabbed the top issue of Rolling Stone from AJ's collage pile. 

"I was thinking we could grab burgers for dinner," Lucas commented as he dug through the magazines for any issues he might have missed. "Or I could make omelets. Did you know I can make omelets?"

Beside him, he could feel AJ relax a little. The sketch in front of him was taking the shape of a giant cat on top of a house. 

"I did not know that," AJ said as he put down his pencil and grabbed an eraser. "Are you better at breakfast foods than you are at mornings?"

"Oh, undeniably," Lucas assured him. "Without a doubt. I am better at most things than I am at mornings."

*****

AJ was out when Joe finally got around to coming by the apartment. He took one look at AJ's things on the couch and then disappeared into his bedroom while Lucas pretended he was more invested in Donkey Kong than in whatever Joe was up to. He even fooled himself, getting wrapped up in a particularly difficult level, only to have to pause the game when Joe emerged.

Joe had two large suitcases with him. Lucas hadn't even realized Joe owned suitcases. But there they were, packed and being dragged to the door.

"Joe?" Lucas asked. "Joe, what's going on?"

Joe came over and sat down on the couch next to Lucas. He plucked the controller from Lucas' hands and placed it on the coffee table.

"Look, Lucas, I think we both know what's going on. I'm spending all my time at Jane's, and you've got AJ staying here. He can take my room. Or you can. I don't care, honestly. I'll sublet to AJ or something. You should be able to swing this place between the two of you."

Lucas knew what the rent was and Joe was right. They could manage. 

"So you're moving out," he asked Joe, just to confirm.

"Call it a leave of absence," Joe told him. "I'm sure you won't miss me."

Lucas regarded him for a long few seconds. "Joe, that's a lie and you know it."

Joe laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, then got up and left. Lucas stayed seated, feeling oddly bereft as well as oddly amused. Then he turned off the Nintendo and went to sort out the bedrooms. By the time AJ got back to the apartment Lucas had swapped just about everything and dug out a couple of beers to celebrate with. Joe hadn't taken them and he hadn't said anything about wanting to come back for them, so as far as Lucas was concerned, they were fair game.

"Lucas, man, where's my stuff?" AJ asked as he shut the door when he got in. "If you want me gone… Shit, did Joe come back? Does _he_ want me gone? I'm sorry, I should have found somewhere else, gone back to Berko's or something, or crashed with Eddie…"

Lucas cut him off by coming around behind him and propelling him forward towards one of the bedroom doors. He opened it and gestured for AJ to look inside.

"Joe has been and gone and left us with this ever so humble abode to ourselves," he told AJ. "Please, make yourself at home."

AJ stood in the doorway of the bedroom and looked in at his things and then turned to Lucas and shook his head. "I don't know how you do it, Lucas."

Lucas just smiled at him and went to go make omelets for dinner. 

It was after dinner and after a couple of beers and after Lucas finally beat that level in Donkey Kong that AJ finally said something.

"Boston sucked," he said to the ceiling. He was stretched out on the couch, legs draped over Lucas' lap. "Do you know how expensive it is in Boston? Everything's like, a fortune compared to here. Their trains are always late, the drivers are horrible, and their streets make no sense whatsoever."

"I've heard they were modeled on cow paths," Lucas said. He leaned forward to grab his beer without dislodging AJ's legs, but AJ was sitting up anyhow.

"Yeah, that's the local story," AJ agreed. "It costs a fortune to live there and I hated it."

"But you stuck around for months," Lucas pointed out. If AJ was talking now, well, it wasn't really pushing.

AJ nodded. "Yeah. I stuck it out a whole semester, and you know, I'd be kicking myself for quitting if I'd thought it was worth staying. But even the school was expensive. And who the hell needs it? I can go to art school around here!"

"Of course you can," Lucas agreed. "Will you?"

"Submitted my portfolio today," AJ said. "So, yeah, I will."

He finished off his beer and left the bottle on the floor by the couch before leaning over to rest his head on Lucas' shoulder. The CD they'd had playing ended and started over at the beginning and three tracks played before he spoke again.

"Corey dumped me," he told Lucas. "Not like, in a mean way. She was really nice about it. You know Corey. Of course she was nice about it. And I stuck around, you know, because of school and I figured maybe something would change. Maybe we'd both change. But nothing changed. She dumped me in October. Said she couldn't handle school and a boyfriend and a job at the same time and she needed the job ‘cause she was saving up for a trip to Europe and now she's in Paris for spring break and it just didn't work, you know? And I'm happy for her. I really am."

"I know you are," Lucas said. "But you can be happy and sad at the same time."

"I was," AJ told him. "I've been sad. But I'm happy too. I'm home. I'm back at Empire. I've got my friends and my art and I've got you."

"I'm not included in 'friends'?" Lucas asked, shifting to look at AJ.

"Of course you are, but you're Lucas. You're like, my oldest friend in the world," AJ said. "You're different."

Lucas smiled and AJ smiled and Lucas figured that was an excellent moment to lean in and kiss AJ. AJ, to Lucas' relief, kissed him back. Which was why they ended up not really needing the second bedroom. Not most of the time, anyhow. Not that night. Everything was absolutely fine and almost entirely perfect.


End file.
